[MLB] Modern Library 100 Best Novels
Modern Library 100 Best Novels (The Board’s List) [MLB]
Published in 1998
No list here has received more scorn and vilification than the Modern Library’s committee-created list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century. First, it came out in 1998, two years before the century was up. This meant the compilation never even considered a number of of novels that made my master list: The Hours, the final installment of McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, Waiting, and others. Next, most of the books on it are sold by the Modern Library publishing house, making the whole concept reek of marketing gimmickry. Finally, the [MLB] has only eight books written by women and even fewer by authors of color. The fact that it lists nothing by Toni Morrison alone is despicable. But though it is easy to take pot shots at the [MLB] list, its selections are almost universally acclaimed. Only two (The Ginger Man and Studs Lonigan) didn’t get a second vote. Moreover, the number of books it recommends that squeaked into the master list with just one other recommendation? Only seven. That means ninety-one books it recommends were also recommended by two or more other lists. The [MLB] does deserve some criticism for neglecting minority voices, but you cannot say it picked bad books.
Click here to see the full Modern Library (Board) list, or scroll below. Works in RED appear on at least one other of the 24 lists I surveyed and so are on the Master List.
- ULYSSES by James Joyce
- THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
- LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
- BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
- THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
- CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
- DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
- SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
- THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
- UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
- THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler
- 1984 by George Orwell
- I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
- TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
- AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
- THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
- SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
- INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
- NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
- HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow
- APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O’Hara
- U.S.A.(trilogy) by John Dos Passos
- WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
- A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster
- THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
- THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
- TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T. Farrell
- THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
- ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
- THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James
- SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
- A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
- AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
- ALL THE KING’S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
- THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
- HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster
- GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
- THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene
- LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
- DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
- A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell
- POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley
- THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
- THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
- NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
- THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
- WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
- TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
- THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
- PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
- PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
- LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
- ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
- THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
- PARADE’S END by Ford Madox Ford
- THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
- ZULEIKA DOBSON by Max Beerbohm
- THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
- DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather
- FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones
- THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES by John Cheever
- THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
- A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
- OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
- HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
- MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis
- THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton
- THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durell
- A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes
- A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by V.S. Naipaul
- THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
- A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
- SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
- THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
- FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
- KIM by Rudyard Kipling
- A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster
- BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
- THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
- ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner
- A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul
- THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen
- LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
- RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow
- THE OLD WIVES’ TALE by Arnold Bennett
- THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
- LOVING by Henry Green
- MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
- TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell
- IRONWEED by William Kennedy
- THE MAGUS by John Fowles
- WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
- UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
- SOPHIE’S CHOICE by William Styron
- THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
- THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain
- THE GINGER MAN by J.P. Donleavy
- THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington